


The Persephone Agreement

by ladyshadowdrake



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, canon compliant idiocy, fixit, is very late to to fandom and did not bring cookies, season 10
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21642163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake
Summary: The Mark may not be coming off, but thoroughly removing himself from temptation had to be at least half as good, right? It didn't get much more removed than marrying the King of Hell.
Relationships: Crowley (Supernatural)/Dean Winchester
Comments: 15
Kudos: 114





	1. Brimstone, Lightning, and Cinnamon Toothpaste

**Author's Note:**

> Has this been done before?
> 
> Okay, so here I am. In a new fandom. That is not new. This is what I get for putting SPN on as my background noise for a solid month. Enjoy my supremely poor decision-making skills.

Cain’s body hit the floor with an underwhelming thump. He died without melodrama, with none of the fanfare that a creature as old and blood soaked as Cain merited. Not even the great flash of light of killing an angel, or the screaming flames of putting a ghost down.

The mark on Dean’s forearm throbbed. No searing pain, no burning, just a low pulse of something almost sexual. His fingertips went numb, and the blood pounding in his ears drowned out even the sound of his own breathing. He looked down at the blade in his hand, steady now for the first time in weeks. He could feel it, warm, a flutter of a heartbeat that was not his against his palm. For a moment, he felt that if he let the blade go, it would sever the artery in his wrist. He would just drain out like an opened faucet, right there on the floor next to Cain’s perfectly ordinary corpse.

He saw his life unfolding in the blood spreading around them. The blade leaving his hand less and less often. The pile of corpses building up at his feet. Crowley, Castiel… Sam there on top. Dean with his lifeblood pounding through the blade. It felt inevitable, cause and effect, one step marching after the next. In that moment, he wasn’t any more concerned about it than he would be with the idea that he might brush his teeth after eating breakfast. The only thing that worried him was exactly how much he wasn’t worried. 

Breathing carefully, Dean left the loft room. He left Cain’s body and the blood seeping into the planks. The dry wood was greedily soaking it up. It would stain. He walked down the stairs, one step marching after the next, counting bodies as he went. Lisa. Ben. Crowley. Castiel. Sam.

His feet touched the ground floor, and Sam stared at him with his eyebrows curled up. He was a puppy, an overgrown kid, always Dean’s little brother. One day, Dean was going to slit his throat, and watch his body drop to the floor with an unimpressive thump, watch his blood spread out as a sticky pool to stain some shitty wooden planks somewhere.

“Dean…?” Sam prompted carefully. His eyes flickered over the blood on Dean’s face, the blood soaking his forearms, the sticky blade still clutched in his hand. Watching his brother examine him covered in blood made Dean recognize the  _ smell _ . Iron, sickly sweet, strong enough to make the fillings in his teeth hurt. He swallowed hard – no different from any number of times he’d had a bloody nose and tasted that faint metal on the back of his tongue for days. Except that it was different, because he liked it. A shiver passed up his spine and down his arms. The hair on his forearms fought to lift up underneath the thick coating of blood. He turned away from Sam’s worried eyes and didn’t look at Cas.

Dean met Crowley’s eyes. The demon lifted one hand, waiting for the blade to be returned, one eyebrow quirked. He stepped back as he held his hand up, turned his opposite shoulder away - presenting a smaller target. He was ready to be betrayed, would probably even feel a little put out if Dean didn’t betray him. Dean could hand the blade to Castiel, let it disappear somewhere. And then what? Get back in the car with Sammy, and count those steps until he buried something sharp in his brother’s heart?

“Let’s talk, Crowley.”

“You owe me that blade,” Crowley said, head tilted, waiting for an attack. There was a time when Dean would have given it back to him by burying it in his chest.

“The blade goes to Cas,” Dean countered. He watched Crowley’s eyes darken, the quirk of his lips. The slight indrawn breath that would end in one of those ‘Dean Winchester…’ speeches. Dean drew in a shuddery breath of his own and interrupted before Crowley could gather the steam. “I go with you.”

Crowley froze, mouth left open, eyes comically wide. Dean was too wired up with the taste of blood to make fun of him for it. Maybe he would file it away for later.

“Dean!” Sam snapped. “What are you doing?”

Cas took a step forward, but Dean’s arm moved automatically, bringing the blade up at an aggressive angle. He didn’t even realize he’d moved until Cas hesitated, hands out at his sides and palms turned out. What did it say about them that Cas didn’t even drop his blade out of his sleeve, just stared at Dean with those expressive eyes screaming confusion and a terrible sort of trust?

Head tilting slowly the other way, Crowley shifted so that his chest was once again presented. He crossed his arms, and gave Dean a long look up and down. “Yes, Dean. What are you doing?”

Dean didn’t know what he was doing, except that his mouth opened and his lips moved, and he realized he must have had this plan sitting in the back of his head, waiting for the breath and the taste of iron to slip out. “No tricks, no loop holes. We do it Persephone-style. I’m allowed back up topside 6 months out of the year, and you don’t own me. I’m not going to be your attack dog, I’m not going to be your assassin on a leash. You’re not going to turn me into a demon, or have me possessed, or make me pick up your goddamned dry cleaning. Sam gets 24/7 protection, and no one lays a finger on Cas. Ever.”

“Dean, do not-!”

“Shut up, Sam!” Dean warned.

Ignoring him and the blade both, Sam darted forward to grab Dean’s arm. Crowley held up a hand, stopping Sam in his tracks and pushing him gently back several feet. Once upon a time, he would have slammed Sam into a wall, and then the conversation would have been a lot less civil. “Hush now; big brother and I are talking,” he murmured, almost as an afterthought. He turned his attention back to Dean, teeth pulling speculatively at his lower lip. “What do I get out of this?”

“You need me to spell it out for you?” He felt the pulse-pulse-pulse of the blade’s heartbeat as a steady tattoo counter to his own. Crowley was number one on Cain’s prediction. Crowley, Castiel, Sam. All in one convenient row. A quick slash at the demon’s throat, reverse motion and stab into the angel’s gut as Cas inevitably rushed forward, and then a pivot, Sam’s face shocked and horrified as he watched Cas die, and the blade slipping upward under Sam’s ribs before he even thought to be concerned. Dean’s arm began to shake.

“You’re the one who said no loop holes, Squirrel,” Crowley pointed out. He watched Dean’s arm tremble. His eyes darted to Castiel, and then over to Sam. A smile touched the edges of his mouth like he could see everything playing out in Dean’s head.

“Me,” Dean gritted out around the blood. “You get me. You said you wanted me by your side, rule hell together, all that jazz. Fine, I’m yours. The blade stays a dimension or three away from me, you give me  _ peace _ . Is it a deal or not?” Dean detached the blade from his palm while Crowley thought and Sam threw a royal bitch fit, struggling against Crowley’s hold and cussing enough that he’d’ve gotten his mouth washed out when they were kids. Dean checked his hand, genuinely surprised to see the skin unbroken. The blade snarled a denial at him – they were together, they were one, he was abandoning it, abandoning part of himself, he was betraying their purpose. He held it out to Cas, but didn’t let go and quirked an eyebrow at Crowley.

“Dean, please think about this,” Cas implored without moving to take the hilt. “If you make this deal, I won’t be able to come for you this time.”

Dean ignored him. “Tick-tock, your majesty.”

“You know how I seal deals,” Crowley said with a grin.

Dean moved before the siren-song of the blade and its heartbeat could break down his walls. He dropped the blade for Cas to catch and surged forward. Crowley made a sound of surprise, tensing for an attack. His hands came up to catch at Dean’s chest, but Dean didn’t bother to knock them away. He circled his longer arms around Crowley’s shoulders and crushed their mouths together. Dean had always been an all-in kind of a guy, and he made it count. Tongue, lips, teeth, the scrape of Crowley’s short beard on his stubble. Crowley smelled like brimstone and lightning, and he tasted like cinnamon toothpaste.

“ _ NO! _ ” Sam howled.

Crowley freed his arms from Dean’s hold, ghosting his fingers down Dean’s sides and sliding his hands to the small of Dean’s back. The touch was possessive, his smile triumphant. “See you in six months, Moose.”

Dean met Sam’s wide eyes. “Don’t do anything stupid, Sam.”

He felt a rush of cold air, a jerk under his sternum, and the blood soaked barn vanished in a sound like Baby’s engine turning over on a cold morning.


	2. Visitation Rights and Pie

Sam sat back in the crappy motel chair and pressed his thumbs into the corners of his eyes until he saw stars. His head throbbed, and he felt desiccated, used up. His skin was too tight, his joints ached when he moved, and his lower back was hot with pain that pulsed in time to his heartbeat. He let his hands drop to land weakly on his thighs. His lips were dry, his mouth was sticky and tasted like things better left undescribed. He couldn’t remember if he’d had any water that day, or the day before.

His gaze transferred to the kitchenette. There were two glasses upside down in the drying rack, old, but clean. The sink was less than ten feet away. He knew he should get up to get some water, dig the aspirin out of his duffle, stretch out his back. He should probably get something to eat as well, but that would require even more effort than the water.

The laptop screen blurred. The words seemed to stretch and double, and his Farsi was never that good to begin with. Before he could gather enough will to get to the water, the door opened. Cas stepped through with several paper bags clutched to his chest and a tray of drinks held awkwardly in one hand. Half a dozen grocery bags dangled from his forearms and he was struggling to get the key out of the lock without losing any of his parcels.

Sam finally made it to his feet and rushed to help Cas with the door.

“Thank you,” Cas said distractedly. He hunched over to get the drink tray to the table without spilling, and then let the paper bags go to tumble across Sam’s books. A wrapped burger spilled out of one while Cas lowered the grocery bags to the floor. He straightened up and frowned at the table, littered with open books and stacks of Sam’s handwritten notes.

“Have you moved from this chair since I left?” Cas asked, turning to look at Sam with his eyebrows creased. He did that a lot.

“Uh… sure,” Sam lied. “What time is it?”

Cas’ shoulders slumped and he sighed. “It is nearly seven.”

So, even for a law student, thirteen hours without a break was excessive. No wonder he felt like he’d been baking under a basking light for a week. He crossed the motel room for that delayed glass of water and drank half of it before dumping his bag out on the bed. A crumpled pile of dirty laundry spilled out, his extra-large bottle of aspirin landing under a yellowing sock. The musty smell rising off the pile made his nose crinkle. Right, laundry had been kind of low on his priority list for a while.

“I understand that obsessive behavior is not an unusual coping mechanism for you, but it will not bring Dean back any faster.”

“It’s been four months, Cas!” Sam dropped four aspirin in his mouth and chugged down the rest of the water, wincing at the bitter taste. “We haven’t heard so much as a peep! I can’t just wait around and hope that Crowley upholds his end of the bargain.”

“I was there when the deal was sealed,” Cas reminded him. “The consequences to Crowley if he should break the deal would be severe.”

“Oh, like _Crowley_ couldn’t find a way around a deal – and what even was that deal? Dean basically sold himself into prison just to get away from the blade.” He grabbed one of the burgers without thinking about the way he used to bitch at Dean for forgetting to bring him a salad. He bit into it, but couldn’t bring himself to sit back down. Now that he was on his feet, his tailbone was making sure to let him know that it also didn’t appreciate thirteen hours in a crappy motel chair. “It’s not like you couldn’t just hide the blade without him needing to be in _Hell_.”

“Crowley gave up possession of the blade and is bound to protect Dean and shield him from the blade’s influence in exchange for Dean’s hand in marriage,” Cas explained, taking Sam’s vacated chair and reaching into the bag for a handful of French fries. “Being separated from the blade by more than one dimension would only add to that protection.”

Sam stared at Cas, mouth still full and gaping loosely open. “Um. What?”

“I believe that it is considered poor manners to speak with your mouth full,” Cas said. He looked at the French fries somewhat mournfully, and then dropped the uneaten pieces back into the bag. He dusted the salt from his fingers.

Swallowing so quickly that he felt every millimeter of it traveling down his throat, Sam tried to kick his brain into gear. He took several long pulls of his soda and pounded on his chest. “Excuse me, did you just say Dean’s _hand in marriage?_ How are you only just now thinking to tell me this?”

Cas blinked at him. “I thought that was understood. Dean did specifically reference Persephone.” When Sam only stared at him, he said, “She was Greek. Married to Hades, the God of the Underworld. When she ate –”

“I know the story of Persephone!” Sam interrupted. “Maybe mentioning that Dean had to _marry Crowley_ would have been helpful!”

“I didn’t realize you were unaware,” Cas said. “You… you did hear him say Persephone, didn’t you?”

Sam slapped the burger back on the table. “Yeah, I thought he was talking about the six months thing!”

“He was not,” Cas said. “Or, perhaps he was, but making a Persephone bargain always results in a binding marriage. I find it difficult to believe that Dean would invoke Persephone without understanding the nature of the agreement.”

“You… are talking about _Dean_ , right?”

Cas’ eyes flicked left and right in careful consideration. “Yes, Sam. You are also talking about Dean, right?”

Sam dropped his head back against the wall and groaned. He scrubbed his hands over his face. “He’s been down there for 4 months,” he said. “That’s _decades_ in Hell, and we don’t even know what Crowley’s doing to him.”

“You could ask your bodyguards again,” Cas offered.

Sam glared. “Yes, thank you. I would like to see them smoke out again and go find some other poor grad students to possess. We haven’t gotten within two yards of a demon without them bailing since the day Crowley took Dean.”

“Crowley did agree that you would have constant protection,” Cas pointed out. “Did you discover anything more about Andrew Richards’ death?”

It took several seconds for Sam to yank his attention away from some very vivid and unpleasant images of what Crowley might be doing with his brother and remember that he and Cas were in a shitty motel off the highway in Wisconsin for a job. His hands clenched into fists, and he felt his gorge rising up, but breathed through it. Dean would kick his ass if he found out that Sam had totally dropped the ball while he was gone.

“Official story is accidental drowning,” Sam said, making a vague gesture toward the laptop. The coroner’s report was buried under twelve other tabs, but at least one of those was also news coverage, and another was Andrew Richards’ Facebook. “I’m going to guess ghost possession. Guy is terminally afraid of water, but the day he drowned, his Facebook is full of pictures of him all… deranged smiles at the lake.”

Sam grabbed the laptop and spun it around, clicking through the tabs until he made it back to Facebook. He scrolled through the photographs until he found one that almost looked like a mistake. Richards was turned away from the camera, and the angle was weird, like the picture had been snapped when he was in the process of putting his phone down. A thin stream of black ectoplasm was visible running into his beard. The rest of the picture was mostly sky – gray, cloudy, and didn’t strike Sam as the best kind of weather for a guy who was extremely hydrophobic to just up and decide to take a dip.

Pushing the laptop back across the table, Sam nudged the second chair out and slid into it to finish eating. To his surprise, the second bag did contain a salad, as well as a cup of fruit. Despite every awful thing he’d been imagining all day, and the even more awful things he’d been imagining in the last few minutes, he felt a smile spread over his lips. The motion pulled the skin, and a split opened right in the middle of his bottom lip. He hissed, and finally went in search of a tube of Carmex.

“So what do we do now?” Cas asked after a moment of peering at the picture.

Sam dabbed the split in his lip, wincing at the sting of the salt from his fingers on the open wound. Sam had been tortured multiple times, had broken bones, illnesses that felt like his insides were being liquefied, but split lips were still the worse. Tiny, irritating wounds often outstripped even the most egregious beatings, especially in moments when he didn’t need to be ignoring pain to get the job done. He squeezed the Carmex onto his ring finger as he crossed the room back to the table and smeared it over his lips.

“The usual. Look into drowning deaths in the area, see if there was ever a body recovered, and go from there.” Sam sighed. “I hate drowned ghosts. If the remains were never recovered, getting rid of this ghost is going to be a serious pain in the ass.”

“We can handle serious pains in the ass,” the Cas said with one of his increasingly more regular attempts at a smile.

Sam nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, we can.”

The night air was gently cold. It felt nice, rather than being biting, and Sam was comfortable in his light jacket and layered shirts. Despite the pleasant temperature, he was awash with nerves and couldn’t help wringing his hands as he paced up and down an unmarked stretch of road.

His protection detail lingered a safe distance down the road. As the six month mark drew closer and Sam still had no idea how to wrestle Dean free of his deal, he’d gotten more aggressive about trying to trap a demon, and they had gotten very good about keeping out of his path. He’d been surprised when one had gotten within shouting distance long enough to give him the location of the handoff, but not surprised when they tailed him out to an unremarkable stretch of road in the Ozarks.

Cas stood next to the car, hands down at his sides, almost unnaturally still in the cool night air. He showed no sign of anxiousness, but rather had that quality of quiet that Sam had come to recognize as a kind of meditation. Sam wanted to borrow some of that stillness, but the clock was ticking slowly over to 9:41 PM, exactly 6 months after Dean vanished.

“You know,” Sam said on pass number fifty-five, “Crowley just agreed that he got to be ‘up topside’ for 6 months out of the year. He never said that all six of those months had to be with us. Crowley could just… pop up here, show him to us, and then whisk him away and lock him in a dungeon for six months.”

“You are correct, of course.”

Sam whirled. The alarm on his phone went off, shrill in the darkness. Crowley stood highlighted in the Impala’s headlights, dressed in his customary dark suit and wool overcoat.

“I could,” Crowley clarified. “If I hadn’t written your visitation rights into the contract.”

Ignoring him, Sam called, “Dean?” He jolted forward, but stopped when Dean didn’t immediately come out of the shadows. He clenched his teeth tightly and glared at Crowley.

“How do we do this?” he asked. Ruby’s knife was a comfortable, familiar presence in the waistband of his jeans. The demonic bodyguard duo had prevented him from leaving a devil’s trap, but he had other tricks.

“Do what?” Crowley asked curiously.

“He means the hostage exchange,” Dean said brightly. He stepped into the light, grinning brightly, and lifted a hand. “Hey, Sammy.”

“You’re not a hostage, and there’s nothing to exchange,” Crowley said.

Dean laughed, and then he reached out and took Crowley’s hand. Sam gaped as Dean leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Have a nice day at work, honey,” he said in a saccharine voice. Even from fifty feet, Sam saw Crowley roll his eyes, but he caught Dean’s hand and turned to kiss him more soundly on the mouth.

“Ring if you need anything,” he said, and then he was gone.

Sam stared, unable to come up with a single word. While he stood gaping like a landed fish, Cas passed him and met Dean in the middle of the crossroad.

“Cas!” Dean called happily. He did not throw his arms around Cas, as he had done in the past when they were reunited after an absence, but rather slid his arms around Cas’ waist and pulled him in. He squeezed him tightly enough to lift Cas off his feet and buried his face against the side of Cas’ neck. “It’s so good to see you again, man.”

“Dean, I am very pleased to see you as well.” Cas kept his arms around Dean’s shoulders until Dean had set him down and stepped away.

“Sammy, you just gonna stand there and stare at me?” Dean held his arms out in invitation. “Come on!” He patted Cas on the shoulder as he passed, and swept Sam up in the same lengthy, tight hug. Sam froze for a moment, assaulted by the scents of Hell – smoke, sulfur, hot metal – and then he unlocked and wrapped around Dean. He was real, and alive, and not some kind of twisted horror. It was more than Sam had dared to hope for.

“Dean… what. I can’t. What happened while you were –”

“Sam, would you shut up for two seconds? Just… hug me and say, ‘hey, I missed you,’ and tell me you brought me some pie, because I have not had a decent slice of cherry pie in longer than I can remember.”

“Um,” was Sam’s witty response. He squeezed Dean harder, aware that he was shaking, but not sure what to do about it. Dean had lifted up on his toes to press his face Sam’s neck and was breathing in slow, deep inhales and warm exhales. “Hey, I missed you,” Sam managed finally.

“And pie…?” Dean prompted, leaning back to look up at him.

“If I may,” a voice interrupted.

Sam spun, knife coming out at the speed of thought even as he pushed Dean behind him. The demon – one of his protective detail – jumped out of the way.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Dean said, catching Sam’s arm when he would have gone after the demon. “Chill, man. This guy is your bodyguard.”

“And I have pie,” the demon said, holding a box out like a peace offering. He kept a very nervous eye on Sam.

“Oh, you’re my favorite,” Dean said. He let Sam’s arm go long enough to grab the box and made an obscene noise. “It’s still warm,” he moaned. There was a fork in the box, and he dug in while Sam felt like his world was tipping sideways. He didn’t know exactly what he expected at this meeting, but none of it was going the way he would have expected.

“Better scram before my brother’s demon-killing trigger finger gets itchy,” Dean said around a mouthful of pie that was so hot steam was pouring out of his mouth like a waterfall. The demon did not have to be told twice, and he was sprinting away before Sam could make up his mind to take another swing.

“You want some of this?” Dean asked, offering the pie box.

Sam made several false starts at talking before finally blurting out, “Are you okay?”

Dean shrugged. “Obviously. Man, it feels nice out here. You know, even in the upper levels, Hell is always pretty nippy, but this is nice. It’s not boiling hot, but it’s not like… freeze your balls off cold either. And pie, Sam.” He set the fork down long enough to give Sam a solid slap on the back. “Shotgun!”

“Why am I not surprised,” Cas said, but he made no further protest when Dean folded himself through the still-open door and pulled it closed after him.

For a moment, there was silence interrupted only by the continuing pornographic sounds Dean was making as he devoured his pie. Far down the road, the black SUV that his very own demonic secret service had followed him out in started up. As they did whenever Sam went anywhere, they waited. Having a demon-driven follow car was alternately frustrating and hilarious, and, Sam privately admitted, it had been useful at least twice. Whether Sam actually wanted their protection or not, they were – pun intended – hell on wheels for taking down monsters when Sam got in over his head.

“Are you okay, Sam?” Cas asked gently.

No. No, Sam was definitely not okay. He was untethered. He didn’t _want_ Dean to have been tortured, but he’d been prepared for an abused Dean. He’d been ready to have to carry a broken or unconscious Dean out of that crossroad, and nurse him back to health. Or else have to track him down when Crowley pulled some kind of bullshit and Dean vanished. A cheerful, unrestrainedly affectionate Dean after six months spent in Hell was not something he’d been prepared for. Cas reached out tentatively and touched Sam’s arm with a couple fingers. He’d been exploring physical contact for several months, and Sam had been trying hard not to discourage him, so he didn’t shake Cas off or push him away.

“Yeah, Cas. I’m fine.”


	3. Interior Design; Frostbite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should be noted that I am basically posting this live, so there is a better than 0 chance that things may be rewritten, edited, or rearranged in the future (though I will likely repost it rather than change it here, if I do make any significant changes)

The sickening vertigo of teleportation was something he would never get used to, but somehow the trip to Hell’s own palace was so much worse than any other time he’d been zapped around by various supernatural beings. He stumbled, reaching out automatically for purchase. His purchase ended up being Crowley, King of Hell, and his… whatever he was, now. Crowley still had his hands on Dean’s hips, and Dean became abruptly aware that he was barely standing, clutching Crowley’s shoulders with shaking hands.

“Hands off the goods,” he gasped, though he wasn’t having any luck letting go of Crowley’s shoulders. The world tilted alarmingly, and he clutched hard at the fabric under his fingers. He’d been knock-out drunk more times than he could count, and a lot more times than he could actually remember. He couldn’t remember ever being so drunk that the floor made a bid to become the wall. He tumbled, gravity suddenly pulling at his right side like it had a personal vendetta against his ribcage.

Crowley caught him just before he could bring them both down. His arms were surprisingly solid, and Dean leaned into him as the only thing that was still.

“What did you do to me?” he moaned. He tried to close his eyes, but that just made the spinning worse. Somewhere, there was a blood-curdling shriek that was burrowing into his brain, rebounding off the inside of his skull like a racquetball going Mach II.

“Not a thing, darling,” Crowley said through the noise, sounding genuinely confused. He levered Dean upright, which just made the room blur into mush. Dean gagged. He was vaguely aware of a hand on his forehead, and his knees hitting something solid, and then his ribs were trying to come out through his mouth. Things went fuzzy after that.

The next time Dean opened his eyes, he felt a profound sense of relief before he’d even realized why he was ready to get on his knees and kiss the ground. The room wasn’t spinning, his stomach was not making a bid for freedom, and he felt warm and comfortable. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just felt… okay. He wasn’t in pain, he was completely relaxed, the temperature was exactly perfect, and even his bladder was behaving.

He tried really hard not to put too much thought into it, but, eventually, the world reasserted itself. He was in Hell. Again. For a deal he’d made with a demon. Again. He looked down at his right arm, but the Mark was still there, angry red and swollen. As he stared at it, a low buzz started in the back of his skull and started to spread. He tore his eyes away from it, and the buzzing faded. Okay, the Mark was angry he’d let go of what damn-well felt like the other half of his soul. His hand clenched into a fist, and then he consciously relaxed it again.

Keeping his mind carefully away from the Mark and the blade, he looked around. He was in a bedroom, walls of stone bricks broken up with rich tapestries mostly in reds, the bed hung with heavy dark-red velvet drapes, massive fireplace with a roaring fire, and he could just see the backs of several tall chairs upholstered in deep green.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Who did I bang last night?” The words scraped past his throat. It was a feeling he was used to – and usually not for pleasant reasons – though that one bartender, man. So worth the sore throat. He must have screamed himself hoarse the night before.

“Unfortunately, absolutely no one.”

Dean very nearly jumped out of his skin. All the comfort and lassitude of the moment before vanished as Crowley leaned around one of the chairs. Dean tried to sit up, but his muscles screamed, and he dropped back down. Definitely hadn’t been screaming for good reasons.

“Nor the night before, nor the five nights before that.” He stood up and set a glass tumbler down on a small side-table and approached the bed. “How are you feeling?”

Dean surreptitiously checked to make sure he was dressed, and found that he was definitely not. He glared up Crowley. “Naked.”

“Sorry about that,” Crowley said, though he didn’t sound the least bit sincere. “Easier to keep you…sanitary this way.”

Dean thought about that for a second, and then decided he didn’t want to know. “What did you do to me, you asshole?”

“As I’ve been telling you for several days, absolutely nothing.” As he drew closer, Dean noticed that he wasn’t in his usual three piece suit and overcoat. He’d stripped off a couple layers, and was in a rumpled heather gray button-up shirt, open at the collar, and black slacks. Crowley perched on the edge of the bed and reached out toward Dean’s face.

Dean jerked back, but didn’t make it very far. He hissed in pain. The back of Crowley’s fingers brushed Dean’s forehead and his eyes flickered briefly red. “Good, fever’s broken. Finally. Seeing anyone in the room other than me?”

Frowning, Dean looked around suspiciously. “No…?”

“Also good. You have been in some kind of fever-induced hallucination for the past… week, or so?”

His eyes went red again, and he gave Dean a creepy once over that made him feel dirty even mostly covered up with blankets. He was quiet for long enough to make Dean think he’d had a stroke or something, but his eyes kept moving. He scooted back to look down at Dean’s right arm and starred for several seconds. Dean itched to move his arm, but he also didn’t really want to think about his right arm at all.

The red cleared out of Crowley’s eyes, and he offered Dean a smile. “The bleeding has stopped, at least.”

Jerking his arm up, Dean searched for an injury, but there was none. His skin was smooth and unblemished everywhere except the Mark.

“Not physical bleeding, idiot. Apparently when we snatched you away from the grip of your darling First Blade, it severed a sort of… psychic artery. Your spirit was bleeding rather profusely for a day or two, and, might I add, you made quite a mess out of my bed. Not really what I was imagining when I thought of having you between my sheets.”

Dean swallowed. He inched away from Crowley. “They are… nice sheets,” he offered.

“Aren’t they? Do stop trying to crawl away, I’m not going to rape you.” He stood up and walked out of the room while Dean just stared helplessly after him. He remembered the feeling of the blade in his hand, the heartbeat of it against his own. He remembered sliding the blade into Cain’s back, and the –

“Stop,” he told himself firmly. “Stop.”

A moment later, the door opened again, and Crowley reappeared. He had a tray between his hands and used his heel to nudge the dark wooden door closed. He set the tray on the table beside the bed, and then sat down again. Dean looked nervously at the tray, expecting to see the usual assortment of blades and saws. It wasn’t like Alistair never pulled this trick on him. To his surprise, the tray only had a glass of water – what looked like water – and a bowl.

“Think you’re up to sitting up for some water?”

“Is it actually water?” Dean asked, but he wasn’t actually sure he cared. It was wet, and his throat was screaming for something wet.

Crowley reached forward to get an arm behind his shoulders, and helped him sit up. He stuffed several pillows behind him and arranged him back against them with unexpected care. “Comfy?” he asked, eyebrow quirked while he waited for an answer.

Dean nodded uncertainly.

“Do I really need to answer the ‘is it water’ question?” Crowley asked, lifting the glass. There was a pink and white bendy straw hanging over the lip of the glass. Dean didn’t even bother answering. He leaned forward to seal his lips around the straw and pulled on it. It tasted like water, but it felt like trying to drink pudding. After two swallows that burned on his hot throat, he let go of the straw and collapsed back to the pillows, panting.

“We’ll give that a rest and try again later.”

“What the hell, Crowley?”

“You. Have been. Ill,” Crowley said very slowly. “In case that wasn’t apparent by our previous conversation in which I clearly stated you have been bleeding spirit all over my bed for the last week. Keeping you alive has been something of a full time occupation.”

“Um… thanks?” Dean tried. His stomach gave an uncertain twitch, but he wasn’t sure if it was an ‘I’m empty, give food’ twitch or an ‘If you try to put anything down your throat, I will make you wish you were dead’ twitch.

“I hardly need thanks,” Crowley said. “Keeping you alive and healthy is literally my job now. It’s burned into your skin.” He waved a hand over Dean’s chest and an uncomfortable prickling broke out over his entire body all at once. Dean lifted his left arm to see lines and lines of text wrapping around his forearm. A moment later, they vanished back into his skin.

“Right,” Dean said uncomfortably. “So… what happens now? Do I get a ‘Co-ruler of Hell’ letterman jacket? Decoder ring?” He drudged up a bitter smile. “Crown?”

Seemingly despite himself, Crowley smiled. “We’ll see what we can come up with, shall we? First, let’s start with soup.”

_

Sam started up as Dean shuffled into the kitchen. He was wearing his robe, a pair of fluffy slippers, and possibly nothing else. He yawned widely, scratching at the stubble on his neck with one hand and rubbing his low back with the opposite fist.

“Made you breakfast,” Sam said, nudging a plate across the table. He crossed the kitchen to the fridge and pulled a glass of orange juice off the top rack. He set it down next to the plate and did his best to not watch as Dean flopped down in a chair, reaching for it automatically.

“No coffee?” Dean mumbled, but he drank the juice in one long gulp and set the glass down.

Sam let his breath out very slowly so it wouldn’t look like a sigh of relief, and then got up to get Dean a cup of coffee and pull the pancakes out of the warm oven.

“That’s what I’m talkin about!” Dean said excitedly. He clapped his hands once and then rubbed them together. He snagged a fork from the center of the table, dumped about half a bottle of syrup on the stack of pancakes, and dug in.

“These are amazing,” he said through a full mouth. “When did you learn to make pancakes?”

“It’s just Bisquick, Dean.” Sam said, though he had learned, or rather re-learned, some cooking while Dean was gone. On the road, they had almost never been in one place long enough to cook for themselves, and once they’d made the bunker into home, Dean had done most of the cooking. With his Grace back, Cas could identify every molecule in a meal, but neither needed to, nor enjoyed eating. It had either been resolve himself to a life of bagged salads and smoothies, or dust off the cookbooks.

“Well, it’s good,” Dean said. He made a happy sound at the appearance of a mug of warm coffee, and snagged a piece of bacon. There was a moment of indecision as he obviously tried to decide whether coffee or bacon came first, and eventually managed to stuff the bacon into his mouth only a millisecond or two before burying his nose in the coffee cup.

“Didn’t Crowley ever feed you?” Sam asked, watching with a sort of horror as Dean downed the entire cup of coffee, luckily cooled down with a generous dose of creamer.

“Mmm, course,” Dean said, stuffing more pancakes into his mouth. “Sometimes by hand,” he added with a wink.

Sam shuddered. Not an image he needed in the slightest. He sat back down slowly and tried to ignore his brother gorging on pancakes and bacon. When Dean finally came up for a breath, it was just to pound his fist against his chest and belch.

“Dude!”

“Sorry, man. It’s just – Hell is not so bad when you’re, you know, in charge, but food? Somehow it’s just not the same. The boys go out and grab it from a real dinner up here on Earth, bring it straight down, and it’s still hot and fresh, and tastes like… I don’t know. Like the water-version of whatever it was supposed to taste like. They have me eating lettuce, Sam. You know why? Because it doesn’t taste much different from a cheeseburger. _Lettuce_ ,” he repeated as if lettuce had personally offended him. Knowing Dean, it probably had.

“Okay,” Sam said. “Right. There’s a lot there to breakdown.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “Dean. It’s been about a week. I thought. Maybe we could… talk?”

“Sure,” Dean said agreeably. He stabbed another wedge of pancakes. “What’s up?”

“What’s up,” Sam repeated. “You’ve been in Hell for the last six months, Dean. What – what happened?”

Dean shrugged. “Did some stuff, got married, big party, mostly do a lot of boring paperwork now.”

Sam blinked at him. He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. He tried again. While he floundered, Dean finished devouring his pancakes and got up to refill his coffee cup. Sam retrieved him another stack of pancakes, which he tucked back into with the same gusto. Dean finally gave up part way through plate 3 and dropped back against his chair to pat his belly and groan.

“I found us a case,” Castiel announced as he stepped into the kitchen. He had a laptop cradled in one arm, and was frowning deeply at the screen while he tapped at the keyboard with one finger. “I don’t know how to fix this,” he added, and then thrust the laptop at Sam irritably.

“You just hit the insert key,” Sam explained. He clicked a few keys, and then adjusted the angle of the screen and peered at it. “Local man, frozen to death in a locked room surrounded by six space heaters. Definitely sounds like our kind of thing. Maybe a ghost.” He scrubbed at the back of his neck. “About a three hour drive.”

“Alright!” Dean tapped his hands on the table _bu-bum-bump_ and stood up. “I’ll get dressed, meet at the car in ten.”

“Dean, wait-!”

“Ten minutes, Sam!” Dean called back from the hallway.

Sam let out a sigh. “Okay, I guess I’ll see you at the car in ten minutes,” he told Cas, shutting the laptop down. He noticed that the battery was almost dead and tabled another conversation about remembering the charger before handing it back.

“I will plug this in,” Cas said, surprising Sam. He folded the laptop against his side and left without noticing Sam’s expression, or at least he didn’t comment on it if he did. Sam watched him go, and felt a pulse of warmth in his chest. Things were still not-right with Dean, but if he closed his eyes and ignored how weirdly okay Dean seemed to be, it was like coming home. He had his family back together again, and they were off on a hunt exactly as if nothing had ever changed.

“Somehow, this is my life,” Sam said to the empty room, but stood to take the dishes to the sink before heading for his room. Dean said ten minutes, but ten minutes usually started from the time he reached his room, and didn’t include the walk to the garage, so Sam would probably still beat him to the car.

The coroner gave them a startled look as they approached. Sam dug his badge out with the ease of long practice and flipped it open. “My name is Agent Stark, these are my partners, Agents Kilmer and Mig.” He folded the badge closed before Dr. Matthews had gotten over the initial shock of finding himself face-to-face with Real Live FBI Agents.

Dean, excited to be back in the saddle, gave the doctor a big smile rather than the ‘Yes-I’m-a-Fed’ expression he’d perfected over the years. Cas just stared at the man. Sam had tried to explain why the blank stare was unnerving, but Cas’ attempts at being friendly were almost moreso. Sam loved him to death, but he was so patently not-human that even people who wouldn’t believe in the supernatural if it (literally) bit them on the nose, he was _off_.

“I… guess you boys are here about Mr. Wicker,” Dr. Matthews said slowly.

“Got it in one,” Dean said with what was not exactly a finger gun.

Dr. Matthews nodded his head twice, casting quick glances between them. “Right. Okay, I was just heading out for my lunch break, but I’ll take you back there real quick.”

“We appreciate that,” Sam said with the more subdued, professional smile that other professionals responded to better than Dean’s cheerful grin. “We’ll be alright on our own,” he said once the doctor had wheeled the body out and given them a brief rundown of the weird cause of death. The doctor made a token protest, but Cas nudged him out of the room, his otherness working to his advantage as he plowed through social convention to wrap an arm tightly around the doctor’s shoulders and steer him bodily from the room.

Dean made a gesture in Cas’ direction and nodded his approval. “You got him to play me,” he observed.

“Yeah, except on him it’s kind of charming in an eccentric sort of way,” Sam said, already distracted by the body of Chris Wicker, “on you, it’s just called being a dick.”

“You’re not wrong,” Dean admitted, and crossed the room to stand at Sam’s shoulder. “Huh.”

Cas came back with the chart and stood on the other side of the body, frowning speculatively. “It says here that he was incased in a block of ice when he was found.” He looked around the chart to peer at the body, which was splotchy white and blue. “He had sealed himself into his bedroom with multiple space heaters. Bed was soaked, carpet was dry. Official COD is organ failure.”

“COD,” Dean said with a grin. “Look at you.”

Pleased by the compliment, Cas offered him a lopsided smile. “Sam is a very good teacher.”

Sam discarded his overcoat and jacket and pulled a pair of nitrile gloves out of his pocket. There was a box of them on the wall, but, as was often the case, they were a size medium, which made his hands feel like overstuffed sausages. Dean, usually not keen to touch corpses where he could avoid it, snagged a pair from the box on the wall, and helped Sam roll the body to get a look at Wicker’s back.

“Scratches,” Cas observed.

“So whatever this was, it clawed him up, and then froze him?” Sam frowned and picked up Wicker’s right hand. He peered closely at the fingernails, and then twisted his arm to examine his forearm. “No defensive wounds.”

“Scratches are noted, but no explanation is suggested,” Cas said, flipping a page on the chart.

“Might not have been the spook,” Dean said. “Maybe our boy was just into some very mildly more-than-vanilla sex.”

“I don’t know, those scratches looked pretty deep, Dean, and the edges are jagged.”

“That means it was most likely not a knife,” Cas explained, leaning over slightly like he was letting Dean in on a secret.

“Or just not a sharp one,” Dean countered. “Or they’re just really determined fingernail gouges. Have you seen some of the fake nails out these days?” he held a finger almost an inch above the tip of his opposite pointer finger. “And sharp.”

Sam considered that as he pulled the sheet up to get a look at Wicker’s toes. “Think a set of fake nails could hold up to that kind of force? Those scratches are almost an inch deep.” As he’d expected, all ten toes were a solid black, but he didn’t expect the burns on the bottoms of his feet.

“How should I know?” Dean asked. “I’ve never had fake nails before. Have you?”

Sam rolled his eyes, but Cas answered seriously that he had not, and perhaps they should procure a set to test the amount of strain they could take.

“A lot more likely to pull the nail off underneath than break. Not something I’m exactly in a hurry to test out,” Sam said. “Look at these burns.”

Cas scooted down the table and leaned over to look at the bottoms of Wicker’s feet. He tilted his head to one side and put a hand out a few inches away, curling his fingers in slightly. “These appear to be handprints."

“Right, that’s what I thought, too. So this ghost, or whatever, leaves a burn at their touch, but then freezes their victim? After clawing into his back? What kind of sense does that make?”

“Sounds like we better hit the crime scene,” was Dean’s only answer.

Sam straightened and resettled the sheet over the corpse while Dean pulled his gloves off and lobbed them for the trashcan. They sailed straight in on the first shot, earning a fist pump. He turned and offered Cas a high five, who happily obliged. When Dean turned to Sam for the same, Sam couldn’t help tugging one glove off and indulging Dean’s good mood. He pulled off the other glove, but dropped his in the trashcan by the sink on his way to wash up. Dean made right for the door, but Sam caught him by the elbow, wet hands and all, and dragged him back to the sink.

“I had gloves on,” Dean complained, but he thrust his hands under the faucet anyways, and even went for the soap without Sam having to remind him.

Cas lined up for his own turn at the sink, even though Sam’s working theory was that germs basically exploded on contact with his skin. It was not a habit he was going to discourage either way. Sam gave the tech at the front desk a wave as they passed, but none of them stopped moving, and the young tech was not about to flag them down to sign up any more than he had chased them down to sign in.

“Is the crime scene still cordoned off?” Dean asked on the way out the door.

“Let’s go find out.”

_

Three days free of the fever and keeping his broth down, Dean was finally getting out of bed. To be fair, when he’d demanded to be let out of bed the first day, Crowley had just wordlessly gestured for the door. Dean had made it about five steps before he’d gone down, and would have hit the floor on both knees if Crowley hadn’t been there, lightning fast, to catch him. Another two days of enforced bed rest, clear broth, and a lot of sleep with the roaring fire, and he was ready to take a walk up the halls of his new… _home_ wasn’t the right word. Neither was _prison_. It was his new – temporary – residence.

The castle looked much the same as Crowley’s bedroom. Rough-hewn stone walls, sparsely decorated, but he passed a team of men (demons) unrolling a carpet in a side-hall, and another pair hanging up a tapestry in a hall, so maybe it was just a work in progress. The windows were made of bubbly glass panes separated by thick lines of black canning, and so warped that he couldn’t see more than the suggestion of a grayish landscape beyond. Whatever light filtered through the windows had a cool tone, and he didn’t get the impression that there would be much sunlight in his future. It was also cold. Not _risk-of-hypothermia_ cold, but definitely _wear-long-underwear_ cold. The clothing he’d arrived in had been washed at some point, but the t-shirt and thin button up weren’t up to the task. At least he’d been wearing his sturdy boots and a thick pair of socks the day he’d driven the blade up into Cain’s heart and –

“Stop,” he reminded himself, briefly halting in the middle of the hall and closing his eyes.

“Uh… sir?”

He looked up and realized that there were four demons an arm’s length away from, struggling to hang a massive portrait with a heavy golden frame just around the corner. They were frozen almost comically, staring at him with wide eyes, the two holding up the portrait straining under the weight.

“Oh, um.” Dean paused. He knew he’d agreed to ‘rule by Crowley’s side,’ but he had no idea what that actually meant. When Crowley had made him that offer, back when he’d been down with a serious case of black-eyes, Dean had figured it meant being Crowley’s enforcer. Head torturer, assassin, menacing figure behind the throne. In the barn, he hadn’t really thought beyond recognizing that Hell was a guaranteed safe-haven for him, a locked cage and the entire mortal world between him and the siren song of the First Blade. Standing in the hall of Hell’s palace, he had no idea how he was supposed to act around demons, or even where he really stood in the hierarchy.

Telling them that he’d been talking to himself was probably not the best way to start his first day on the job. “Little to the left,” he said, making a gesture with one hand.

The demons exchanged nervous glances, and then shuffled left a few inches. Dean gave them an ‘ok’ gesture and continued on. The skin between his shoulder blades felt itchy. They were watching him, he knew it. Them and every other demon in a castle full of demons, a castle where he was, quite probably, the only human in residence.

He came to a stumbling halt, reaching out blindly for any form of support, and finding a broad window ledge. He leaned against it, painfully aware that the only thing keeping him upright was his elbow braced on the cold stones and his weight leaning into the wall beneath. His knees were trembling like a newborn colt, and he felt sick and panicky.

“What have you done, you dumb sonovabitch?” he asked his distorted reflection. He had done a lot of dumb, impulsive, dumb, thoughtless, _dumb_ things in his life, but this had to take the cake. If it hadn’t been for the blood, for the blade singing in his hand like he’d finally found home, for Cain lying dead on the floor, for Sammy looking at him with his eyebrows all rucked up in concern, if he could have just _thought_ for a minute, he could have found another way.

“Dean?”

Startled, Dean struggled to push himself back upright and away from the window sill, but his legs were still miserably weak. On top of being dumb enough to agree to (ask for, demand) the deal in the first place, he was stupid enough to just go walking around the castle full of demons who probably would all love to shove a blade through his back without even a pocket knife on him, and so weak he would probably fall over at a gentle shove.

“Just checking out the scenery,” he said as he turned on his wobbly legs.

Crowley stood just out of easy reach, arms crossed, one eyebrow hiked up his forehead. “Looking for an escape?”

“Why would I be looking for escape?” Dean asked flippantly. “This is my – uh – my castle too now, right?”

Looking equal parts amused and pained, Crowley said, “Yes, I suppose it is.” He glanced to the side, and Dean figured that he was as aware of the listening demon ears as Dean. “I thought you might enjoy some dinner,” he said, and then added, “In our rooms.”

Dean looked down the hall. It wasn’t like he’d been going anywhere in particular, and continuing any further just for spite was more likely to find him collapsed at some demon’s feet, ripe for getting his throat ripped out. He shivered in the chilly air, and finally realized that Crowley might wear all those layers and the fancy overcoat for more than just aesthetic. 

“Sure, I could eat,” Dean said, though even the idea of eating made him a little queasy.

“If you’ll allow me the indulgence?” Crowley asked, holding an arm out.

Dean glared at him, but Crowley’s quick glance at his still unsteady legs made Dean hesitate on the verge of telling him to fuck right the hell off. He let it go for another moment, but finally reached out to take Crowley’s arm. He leaned subtly on him, and they moved slowly. To any observer, maybe a couple in love taking a leisurely stroll. Giving off the appearance of being twitterpated was probably not much better than displaying Dean’s physical weakness, but at least it would have less-immediate repercussions. It made Dean want to punch something, and Crowley was the closest something.

“You’re enjoying this,” Dean hissed under his breath.

“Quite,” Crowley agreed with a smug smile. He reached over and patted Dean’s hand affectionately as they passed by the same group of demons Dean had inadvertently given orders on interior design. They were very carefully not watching as he and Crowley went by.

Dean’s hand tightened on Crowley’s arm, and his opposite hand clenched into a fist. The Mark throbbed faintly. He took a careful breath and forced his right hand to relax on Crowley’s wrist. They made it back to the warm room without any mishaps, but the door was barely closed before Dean was stumbling for the bed. Crowley half-carried him the last few feet, and Dean landed heavily on the mattress. Despite the chill of the corridor, he was soaked in sweat.

“Worth it?” Crowley asked, standing at the edge of the bed and staring down at Dean with an expression Dean couldn’t hope to interpret.

“Fuck the hell off,” Dean replied.

Crowley made a soft noise of amusement. He left Dean to struggle his way out of his boots and stepped out of his line of sight. After the walk, getting his boots off was like running a marathon after taking down a vampire nest. He’d forgotten how much of a bitch the old combat boots were, which made sense, since they weren’t usually this much of a bitch unless he was the kind of drunk that didn’t mind sleeping in his boots, and usually didn’t remember trying to get them off by morning.

“Need some help?” Crowley asked, setting the tray down at the bedside table. Dean glanced over to see that he’d graduated from water and clear broth to water, clear broth, and bread. Joy.

“Thought I told you to fuck off.” Despite that, he didn’t fight when Crowley made a frustrated noise and went down on one knee. “But this is so soon,” Dean gasped, but the effort was weak.

Crowley’s head popped up over the edge of the bed. “Darling, considering that we’re already married, I think we’re past the proposal stage, don’t you?”

Dean’s head swam a little. “I was afraid of that.”

Rolling his eyes hard enough that Dean was a little surprised they didn’t pop right out of his head, Crowley disappeared again. Dean felt a tug on his left leg, and then the boot slid free. A moment later, the next came loose. Dean groaned in unexpected relief as he pulled his legs up on the bed with some effort. Though they were his most comfortable pair of jeans, just then they were too hot and too tight and were bunched up behind his knees. He pulled at his fly until the button slipped out of the well-worn hole and the zipper practically opened on its own.

He tried squirming out of them, but didn’t have any luck until he felt Crowley’s thumbs sliding into the pant legs alongside his ankles. Crowley held the frayed hems of his jeans while Dean inched backwards across the bed. He curled onto his side once he was free, and just lay there, feeling exhausted and weak and angry.

“I hate you,” he gasped out between breaths.

“That’s not true,” Crowley said. “There are a lot of people, angels, monsters, and so on, you could have gone to. I was the top of your list. For that matter, there were a lot of deals you could offered me, but you chose to invoke Persephone.”

“Being the least of the evils doesn’t mean I don’t hate you,” Dean said. The flush was just from the exertion, and torture couldn’t make him admit otherwise.

Crowley chuckled, but stood up long enough to strip out of the overcoat and jacket, and then crawled onto the bed. Dean put his hands up to fend Crowley off, but he was definitely in ‘weak as a kitten’ territory, and Crowley had no trouble getting his arms under Dean’s back and pulling him around to a comfortable recline.

“I already told you, Squirrel, I’m not going to rape you.”

“Yeah, just try it,” Dean muttered.

Crowley directed his gaze downward and let out a heavy sigh. It was the same kind of gesture Dean recognized as someone looking heavenward for strength, but Dean guessed that had a different connotation in Hell. Dean found himself laughing. He wheezed through it, putting one hand up to cover his eyes. Dean Winchester, weak and helpless, half naked, and about to be spoon fed by the King of Hell in a chilly castle full of demons.

“You are insufferable,” Crowley said. He turned around on the bed to bring the tray over, and helped Dean with his water glass.

“You’re a dick,” Dean retorted, but the delay and the fact that Crowley was patiently helping him hold a glass of water that he would probably not be able to manage on his own made it a little weak as far as witty rejoinders went.

“Yes, yes, dear. I am a dick. You are perfect angel. Drink your water, and I’ll get you some soup.”

Dean glared, but then froze as a thought occurred to him. He looked over at the door, and then back to Crowley. “All your demon groupies think we’re –”

“Consummating our union, yes. Don’t worry, you’re quite the lover, I hear. Keeping me thoroughly occupied and all.” He looked so freaking smug about it.

“Damnit,” Dean hissed under his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback appreciated: do we like this kind of back and forth?


	4. Policy Changes; A Second Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley appears eventually, I promise. 
> 
> lbr - I'm just making this up as I go.

Sam frowned around the simple bedroom. Seven times out of ten, it helped that people didn’t tend to believe in the supernatural. They were less likely to put themselves in harm’s way, or make his job more difficult. A little bit of a knowledge was a dangerous thing, and there wasn’t a lot that was much more dangerous than someone who believed in the supernatural and knew just enough to get their throats slit. It didn’t happen often, but every now and then, he ran across someone who had read those damn Carver Edlund books and used what they’d read to track down the nearest werewolf, ghost, or vampire. It almost never ended in anything by blood.

Then there were times when Sam couldn’t figure out how anyone could _not_ believe. Wicker’s apartment was in that middle ground any town formed as it grew. It wasn’t the fashionable part of town, but it hadn’t yet succumbed to being a place where people didn’t want to walk the street alone at night. One street over, there were bars on the windows, and two streets the other way was the town’s more prosperous neighborhood. The bedroom sported peeling wallpaper, olive green carpet straight out of the 60’s, and a bedframe that could have been early 20th century (or, more likely, a 1980’s replica). The bedroom set looked like it had been new a generation before Wicker’s first birthday, but it was solid and not in terrible condition.

The room had not just been locked from the inside. It had been boarded up. The windows were still covered in thick sheets of plywood with old planks nailed on top at haphazard angles. When the police had found him – days later, and only after his boss had finally reported him missing after not showing up to work for three days – they’d had to take the door down with hatchets. It was a mangled mess, but three layers of plywood and four planks that would have gone completely across the door were still attached. The space heaters had been left where they’d been found, six units that were a lot larger than Sam would have expected, and old, not the cheap plastic heaters he’d seen at Walmart. In such a small space, they would have turned the room into a sauna, and the police report indicated that they’d still been on when the door had been broken down.

Despite that, the mattress had been soaked straight through, and Wicker had been found stretched out on his bed, incased in several inches of ice that was either impervious to the blasting heaters, or else had been several feet thick when he’d died. How anyone could walk into that room and not think that Some _thing_ had been involved blew Sam’s mind.

“This stretches the realm of the believable,” Dean said, as if reading Sam’s mind. He gave one of the planks over the windows an experimental tug, and then yanked harder. “Solid craftsmanship.”

“No sulfur, no ectoplasm, no blood,” Cas added, walking around the bed with a frown etched deeply on his face.

“None?” Dean asked, eyebrows going up. “Those scratches on his back would have bled enough to slide down a slip’n’slide without the hose on.”

“Charming image,” Sam said, flinching.

Dean made a little facial shrug that both acknowledged Sam’s concern that said comment might have been a result of a stay in Hell, and a reminder that it was still exactly something he would have said pre-Hell.

“Perhaps the scratches happened elsewhere?” Cas said, but he didn’t sound convinced, and no one responded to it.

The bedspread was green with pink and white flowers that matched the dust ruffle and the pillow shams. It showed obvious signs of water damage, as did the carpet immediately around the bed. Presumably, the officers who had discovered the scene had turned the heaters off, and the bed had dripped a steady stream of ice melt onto the carpet for days. Sam reached out and touched the bed. The top of the bedspread was dry, but when he pressed down, he could feel the dampness underneath, which was consistent with the strong scent of mildew.

Dean stopped at the foot of the bed and crossed his arms. He starred down at it pensively, his expression getting grimmer by the moment. “Was that gingerbread in the kitchen?”

Sam blinked. He turned back toward the door, and then redirected his gaze at Dean. He had noted a sheet of cookies sitting out on the oven as a matter of course, but he hadn’t exactly stopped to give them a taste-test. “Not sure. Is that important?”

Cas’ eyes sharpened on Dean’s face, but he didn’t say anything. He left the room quickly, weaving around Dean and ducking through the shattered door. Dean didn’t explain any further, and Sam wasn’t sure how to ask. He wanted to tell himself that it was just as likely that Cas would come back to affirm that yes, it was gingerbread, and Dean’s face would light up, and he would exclaim that he was starving. He tried, but the dark look on Dean’s face made it hard to sell himself that line.

Cas leaned in through the door. “It is gingerbread,” he said.

Dean sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a sharp explosion of air. “Call your detail, have them meet us at the hotel,” he said, making a flicking gesture with two fingers.

Sam noticed the preemptive flick, but shelved his response to that one. “Um…call them?”

Dean looked at him hard, and several seconds of awkward silence passed between. “Why would you not have a way to contact your protective detail, Sam?”

“Well,” Sam explained slowly, “Any time they get within arm’s reach of me, I try to trap and-or kill them, so…” He turned his hands up to display his confusion.

“Sam.” Dean made an abortive gesture. “I know they’re demons, but Jesus Christ, they’re here to protect you. You can’t tell me there hasn’t been _one job_ when having some demon muscle wouldn’t have been useful.”

“They’re _demons_ , Dean.”

“Yeah, and I’m married to their fucking king, Sam.” He threw his arms out in frustration and then pushed through the door and out into the hall. “Unbelievable!” Sam heard him call back from the front door.

Sam huffed out a breath and gestured after him. “Better follow him,” he said, but Cas was already turning to leave. The hall was narrow and covered in faux-wood paneling, the same green carpet as the bedroom, and dozens of framed photographs. Sam had to turn slightly to avoid knocking any of them askew, and then it was serious work navigating the maze of stacks of books and magazines littering the living room floor.

He found Dean in the apartment complex’s parking lot, but not standing at the Impala’s door. He was walking toward the street, and Sam could tell from the set of his shoulders that the next acceptable target he came across was going to get a punch to the nose.

Cas sped up to chase him down, but Sam went for the car. By the time he made it out of the covered parking spot, the follow car – a different black SUV – had caught wise that Dean wanted their attention and were coming to a stop next to him. Sam stomped on the accelerator and just had the car in park when Dean reached through the open window and smashed the driver’s face into the steering wheel.

“Dean!” Sam called, but Cas was already grabbing him by the arm to pull him away before any passerby thought to call the police.

Dean made that same sharp gesture with one hand. “You two – follow.”

Without waiting for a response, Dean backed away and grabbed Cas by one wrist. He tugged gently despite the obvious anger in every line of his posture, and then let go and swept his coat back to tuck his hands in pockets. With a start, Sam noticed how easy Dean was in the suit. Over the last decade, he’d gotten good about putting on the suit and not looking like a stick of driftwood in it, but that wasn’t the same thing as being comfortable in it. As Dean slid one hand out to open the car door, Sam realized that he looked at home in the suit the way he never had before, like it was as natural to him as his own skin.

He swallowed hard and threw the demons a glance before getting back into the car. Dean had folded himself into the backseat, and Cas climbed into the front with a uncertain expression settling into the corners of his mouth. The car was ominously quiet as they made the trip back to the motel, Dean staring out the side window, and Cas watching the demons from the side mirror.

When they made it to the motel, Dean didn’t even wait for the car to be put in park to open the door. The demons pulled in a second behind them, and Dean ignored them as he passed in front of their SUV to room number 118. He opened the door, and then flipped the swing lock around to prevent the door from closing behind him. The door hit it with a loud smack and bounced once before settling.

“I think Dean is upset,” Cas said.

Sam snorted. He’d long since seen through the babe-in-the-woods-I-don’t-understand-you-humans mask, but he hadn’t grown tired of it yet. He nudged his shoulder into Cas’ and stepped onto the sidewalk, but gestured for the two nervous demons to proceed him into the room. No way was he going to turn his back on them.

They seemed equally unhappy to have him behind them, and Sam couldn’t really blame them, but he wasn’t going to give them a choice. The pair exchanged a nervous glance and pushed into the motel room. Dean had them both in chairs lined up against the wall by the time Sam and Cas made it in behind them.

“We have permission!” the demon who’d brought Dean the pie blurted out. “Both of us, full consent. And I’m already in the process of cleaning thirty years of smoke damage from my host’s lungs.”

Sam looked uncertainly between Dean and the demon. “Dean? What’s he talking about?”

“And eyesight!” the other demon babbled, making an aborted gesture at his eyes. “20/10 by the time I leave, swear.”

“Dean…?”

“New possession requirements,” Dean said dismissively. “Not what I care about right. I’d like to know why my brother has no way of getting in touch with you if he gets in trouble.”

The first demon made a good impression of a landed fish. “He… that is, your royal majesty’s brother is… justifiably… wary of demons. None of us have ever gotten close enough to –”

“So you write your fucking phone number on a goddamned sticky note and put it on the windshield!” Dean shouted. “Your only job is to keep him safe! I’d like to know how the fuck you’re doing that if he can’t tell you he’s in trouble!”

“We keep very close tabs, my queen!” the second demon blurted out.

Dean’s right eye twitched.

Sam snorted out a shocked laugh. “ _My queen_ …?”

“It’s a title, Sam!” Dean snapped. “Stop being so…. Gender normal.”

“I think you mean hetronor…Never mind. Queen?”

“I am married to the King of Hell, Sam. You know this.” Before Sam could make any further comments, Dean turned back to the pair of demons. “We are going to talk about this more later. Right now, I want your cell phones.” Both demons fumbled in their pockets and produced a small pile of cell phones in a variety of shapes and colors. Dean grabbed one, thumbs flying over the touch screen.

“Sam, log these numbers, or so help me,” Dean said, but didn’t wait for a response as Sam’s phone chirped. “I think there’s been a breach,” he said to the demons without looking up from the phone between his hands. “If I am not mistaken, there has been an imp running loose in this town, and I’d like to know why.”

He looked up at the pair through his eyelashes and they both blanched.

“Not our department,” one hurried to say while the other looked like he was two seconds away from a total meltdown. “We don’t run in those circles!”

Dean’s eyes narrowed, but he finally looked back down at the phone. Cas’ phone let out a loud series of R2D2 beeps and whistles. Dean paused for a second and glanced over his shoulder. “Nice,” he praised, and then tossed the phone to the table and grabbed another. He started entering numbers again. “Alright, step back, I want to talk to your hosts,” he said.

Sam jolted back in surprise. Both of the demons went limp almost at once, and then straightened slowly, blinking, mouths opening and closing stickily. The one on the left – tall and gangly, but in that fashion model kind of way. He had and undercut, hair salt-waved blond with dark roots, and a spattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose. The other couldn’t have been more different if it had been intentional, and Sam got the impression that it very well might have been. He was shorter than average, stocky, and built like a linebacker turned serious competitive fighter. His dark hair was cropped close and he had a full beard neatly groomed into a short braid. Both of them shifted in their chairs like they were trying to figure out where their limbs were and how to get them working again.

Without turning around or stopping with the typing, Dean asked, “You mind getting these guys some water? You two, give me thumbs-up if you can hear me.”

Surfer-model managed a jittery thumbs-almost-up, but his buddy couldn’t handle more than flopping his right hand sharply upward and over. Dean nodded and let them take a few more minutes to get control of their bodies. Sam’s second phone in his duffle blipped, and Cas’ second phone whistled. Sam imagined that the glove box in the car was going crazy with notifications. He set one glass down on the entertainment center, and then eased behind Dean to slide the other onto the table. It would have been easier to lean over them, but he was not about to put himself off balance and in striking distance of a demon.

Sam wanted very badly to ask about the whole ‘queen’ thing, but bit his tongue and took the excuse of stripping of his coat and jacket off to get his expression under control. Cas moved forward until his stomach was nearly touching the back of Dean’s head so Sam could get behind him to hang his clothing up. When he didn’t move back again, Sam pulled the room’s last chair over to watch the unfolding drama. Cas could do intimidating better than just about anyone Sam knew, and standing with arms crossed over Dean’s head, he looked about as terrifying as Sam had ever seen him. It was a good look.

“Can I get some thumbs, boys?” Dean asked after several more minutes of quiet punctuated only by the tap-tap-tap of his fingers on the phones. He looked up to wait, and both managed at least one thumb-up. The one on the left even got his water glass shakily to his mouth. Dean let him take a few drinks, and then snapped the last phone shut and lobbed it to the table. “Names?”

The blond pointed vaguely at his chiseled face and introduced himself as Sean. His stocky partner was Jason. Both of them were warming up to their bodies again, rolling their shoulders and working their jaws.

“You sign up for this? Full consent, knew what you were getting into?” At the pair of nods, he asked, “What are you getting out of this?”

Sean once again pointed at his face. “Skin and cheekbones like this don’t come for free,” he said.

Dean’s grin blossomed warm and larger-than-life across his face. He quirked one brow. “Sometimes they do,” he said smugly.

Sean blinked, but then gave Dean a very careful once-over, and finally nodded. He looked away, slouching down in his chair where the demon had held his body almost painfully upright.

“My mom,” Jason said. “Cancer.”

Dean didn’t ask for further clarification. He looked carefully between them, and then asked, “How are they treating you?”

Sean just shrugged, but Jason said, “Okay. I’ve got Neflix 24/7.” He pointed toward his head. “Don’t have to pay attention much.”

Sam watched the interaction with an increasing sense of surrealism, and he surreptitiously pinched the inside of his arm to make sure he was awake. Dean didn’t say anything, but Sam saw his eyes slide sideways and the corner of his mouth twitch up. Sticking his tongue out at Queen Dean was probably not appropriate so Sam just tucked his hands away and turned his attention back to the two – apparently willing – demon hosts.

“Great. I need to make a call. Either of you know where your passengers keep the bowl?”

Jason jerked a thumb toward the window. “Out in the truck,” he said, but then hesitated and gave Cas a nervous look. “You’re not gonna… slit my throat. Or something?”

Dean straightened up very slowly. The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. “Has he been slitting throats to make calls?”

Sean sat up in obvious alarm and Jason shook his head almost frantically, hands waving in front of him. “No, no, no,” they repeated in stereo.

“I just – his memory,” Jason said. “And you.” He froze, skin going ashy. “Not that you. I mean. You’re amazing?”

Dean glared. “Just go get the bowl.” He jerked a thumb toward the door, and Jason scrambled out of the chair. When neither Dean nor Cas moved, he ended up having to half climb over the table, and made it all the way out the door before apparently remembering that he didn’t have the keys and sheepishly poking his head back around the doorframe. Sean lifted his hips out of his chair to dig the keys out of his pocket and threw them at the door. The bundle of keys passed within inches of Cas’ ear. He didn’t so much as flinch, but Sam saw his eyes narrow, and Sean lost several shades as he stared up Cas, and then looked down at Dean. He slumped back down in the chair and tried to cover his face.

A chilly silence settled so heavily in the room that Sam started to feel a little bad for trying so hard to kill his protection detail, and then was annoyed at himself for feeling guilty over mistreating a demon. He stretched in his chair, getting Sean’s undivided attention right away. Sam locked eyes with him, looking for any hint of the demon playing a person, but most demons couldn’t play a physically intimidated human for long. For most demons, there were very few tortures on earth they hadn’t seen and become bored of a thousand years before in Hell. Even the really best actors, like Meg, had tells and were fast to drop the act at the earliest opportunity.

Jason returned with a beaten copper bowl and a rough knife. He eased sideways around Cas, looking like he was about to faint every time his body brushed Cas’ clothing. His hands shook faintly as he held the bowl and knife out to Dean, and he all but collapsed into the chair. It groaned under his weight, and the room was so painfully silent that every creak of the wood as he readjusted his position screamed in the air.

Dean let it go beyond the point of serious until it became comical, and then descended back into uncomfortable.

“Jesus, man,” Sam complained. He opened the cuff of his left sleeve with a practiced twist of his fingers and leaned forward to hold his arm over the bowl. “Just make your damn call. You and I are going to have a talk about this later.”

Dean rolled his eyes but drew the blade across Sam’s forearm to get the blood flowing. He held the bowl under the stream, and nodded when he had enough. Without Sam even having to look at him (or Cas having to look at Sam for that matter), Cas reached over Dean’s head and held his palm over the wound. The familiar warm glow of Cas’ Grace washed over him, and the cut sealed shut.

Waiting just long enough to make sure the cut was healed, Dean leaned over the bowl and whispered to Sam’s blood swirling at the bottom. The words had barely passed his lips before Dean tilted his head to listen.

“Put me through the Guardian of the Eastern Gate right the fuck now. Did I stutter?” He took a breath to continue speaking, but then stopped with a satisfied look on his face and a short nod. Another tense moment passed, and then something that was not so much a sound as a spider leg tickle on the back of Sam’s neck filled the room. “Did you let an imp out of the Pit?” He listened for a moment and that spider leg tickle turned into a full body thrum. “You have got sixty seconds, my time, to figure that out.”

The sense of the demon on the other end of the line vanished. Sam let his breath out, not realizing how fast his heart was going until that indefinable pressure was gone. The realization made it so much worse when that presence was back, even louder, Sam’s skin crawling with thousands of tiny needles, and static humming in his ears exactly sixty seconds later. The static swelled to a tinnitus ring, and then abruptly cut out.

Dean rubbed hard at his right ear and shook the disturbing encounter off. “That’s always fun,” he said. He blinked a few times and then snapped his fingers. “Put your passengers back on.”

Sean disappeared immediately, so obviously relieved not to have to be in the driver’s seat anymore that Sam heard his spine pop as the demon shot back upright. Jason actually gave them all a hesitant little wave and then slumped forward.

“Alright, names,” Dean demanded.

“Therosuezomas,” Sean’s demon offered immediately.

Jason's took a moment longer to regain control of his host and then said, “Elimodius.”

“Suzi, Eli, got it.” Dean stood and yanked his duffle out of the closet. He found his salt, flicked the lid off with the tip of one thumb, and dumped it in the bowl. He followed that up with a generous squirt of lighter fluid, and then tossed a book of matches at Sam’s face. Sam caught them on the rebound, and glared at Dean, but he struck a match and dropped it in the bowl. He was not about to argue with making a large sample of his blood thoroughly unusable before the demons got their claws on it again.

“Melt it down,” Dean said, passing the still-burning bowl off. Eli was quick to get the bowl out of his hands and into the table, blowing across his palms once it was down.

Sam hiked an eyebrow. He had never seen a demon care even a moment for the state of its meatsuit. Eli cut a hand over the top of the flame, and it went out. While Dean watched with critical attention, he gestured the bowl into a metal trashcan, and then closed his fist over it.

Dean leaned over to make sure the bowl had been unmade, and then nodded. “Get out of here,” Dean said, and then added, “Don’t go far.”

Neither one had a response, and both looked more than happy to get out of the room.

“It was an imp,” Cas summed up in the resulting silence.

Dean huffed out a breath and pulled a cellphone out of his pocket. “Yep,” he said, popping the “p” obnoxiously. He scrolled through his contacts, and then clicked one, and put the phone to his ear. “Hi, pumpkin,” he greeted with so much saccharine that Sam actually gagged. “Miss me yet?” he grinned at the resulting response, and then said, “Might be some waves down in the downstairs-downstairs. Imp running about topside. Some shitty little town called… Bryson City. North Carolina. Don’t know yet. Yeah, have fun.” He swiped a thumb across the phone and tucked it back into his pocket. “Some Pit demons are about to have a really bad century,” he said.

“Okay,” Sam said slowly. “Why here? An imp – which is different from the black-eyes stuffed in those kids?”

“Hey, those kids signed up,” Dean pointed out. “And yes. Imps are like…” He snapped his fingers together and a bright smile lit up his face. “Those PA’s that one time when we were in the other –”

“I remember, Dean,” Sam interrupted. “So they’re low level functionaries, basically.”

“Essentially. Except they have more teeth,” Cas said.

“Sharp,” Dean said, bearing his own teeth, and curling his fingers in front of his lips. “Sharp and very bite-y.”

“They are also barbed,” Cas added helpfully.

Dean pointed at him. “Barbed,” he agreed.

“So why here?” Sam repeated. “Why Christopher Wicker?”

Dean shrugged. “No idea, yet. One of the good things about the time differential in the Pit is that in the time it’s taken us to have this conversation, they’ve had almost a week to investigate. We do our thing up here, tomorrow morning Crowley pops up to give us the results of a long investigation, find the imp, stuff it back in the Pit. Easy-peasy. Who wants pie?”

Sam held up a finger. “Dean, can we talk about what just happened? If you don’t mind, that is, my queen.” Sam made an elaborate bow to Dean’s very obvious displeasure.

“Job title, Sam.”

“Okay, how about the whole ‘informed consent’ thing?” Sam prodded. “And fixing eyesight? Cleaning lungs? What the hell?”

“I told you, new possession rules. They get a visa to go up topside, and they have to get permission from their host, offer fair trade, and leave the body in better condition than they found it. Set terms, no funny business.”

Sam stared at him blankly. He was tempted to pinch himself again. Based on the frown on Cas’ face, he wasn’t the only one. They exchanged glances, and then Cas hesitantly offered, “That is a … significant change in policy.”

“Yeah, well, it pays to be queen,” was Dean’s bright answer. “Turns out the only thing that scares most of Hell more than Crowley is me. Who would have guessed?”

“Dude, what the hell happened to you down there?” Sam all but exploded. “You spent… what, sixty _years_ down there? And, and… policy change? My _queen_? Who _are_ you?”

“It wasn’t sixty years, Sam,” Dean said, seeming to only just then realize he was still in his suit. He pulled his jacket off and draped it neatly over the edge of the bed. “More like five.”

“That is not how Hell math works!” Sam said. “I should know – _we_ should now. We’ve kind of _been there_ _before_ , Dean.”

“Yeah, and that’s a thing you never told me, by the way.” Dean pulled his tie off and laid it over the jacket. He gave Sam a significant look. “See, the time differential between here and Hell depends on where in Hell you are.” He unbuttoned his cuffs and held one hand, palm-down at the approximate level of his eyes. “The palace is right at top, and the time is basically one-to-one. Go down one level, and you get about an extra hour down there per month up here, and so on. The Pit is almost as far down as you can get, which we know is about a decade there per month here,” he said, dropping his hand to waist-height. “As far down as you can get _except_ , of course, the freaking Cage. Which is as far down from the Pit as the Pit is from _Heaven, Sam_. So the year and change that your soul spent in the Cage? Hell, the few days that _you_ spent in the Cage with it? How many years was that?”

Sam blinked, unsure exactly when the conversation had turned around. He looked blankly at Dean. “I don’t really remember that, Dean. For pretty obvious damn reasons, my memories of the Cage are a little fuzzy.”

“One thousand, three-hundred, ninety-one years, one-hundred days, twenty-three hours, eighteen minutes, and forty-six seconds,” Cas provided promptly. “I can give you the nano and picoseconds as well if you like.” When they only stared at him, he added, “I remember every moment, having taken the memories from your mind.”

Sam stared at him horror. What memories he did have of the Cage still gave him nightmares that would leave him shaking and cold to the marrow for hours afterward. Sometimes, just the touch of his clothing would make his skin burn for days. Even with that, all he could remember of the Cage was a few snatches, maybe a couple weeks in total. Cas had over a thousand years of memories of the Cage living actively in his mind. “Jesus, Cas.”

Cas’ face creased in confusion. “It is a mere fraction of my total memory. I have infinite knowledge, Sam. I have memories of everything that mankind ever has or will know. A thousand years of memories is not significant to me. On the contrary… in Heaven, neither Michael nor Lucifer ever so much as acknowledged my existence. They are my brothers, but prior to lifting those memories, I’d had nearly no interaction with them.”

“So a thousand years of being tortured is better than nothing at all?”

“It was not all torture,” Cas said dismissively.

“Right,” Sam said slowly. He swallowed hard, because he had a few of those memories too, and they left him a sobbing mess in the middle of the night when they resurfaced. He took three steady breaths and turned back to Dean, who was examining Cas just as shrewdly. “So, if it’s been five years,” he said bringing them back on topic, “then you didn’t spend it all in the palace. Where were you?”

Dean shrugged. “Toured the levels, said hi to the staff, did the whole royal wave thing. Purgatory, off and on –”

“Crowley dropped you in _Purgatory,_ Dean?” Sam all but shouted as Cas started forward.

“He didn’t drop me there, Sam. I stop by every now and then to visit Benny, see the sights, behead some vampires. It’s like a vacation. Can we talk about this later? I am starving.”

“No, Dean! Purgatory is a _vacation_?”

Dean made a frustrated noise and ripped his right sleeve up until the Mark was visible just below his elbow. It looked less swollen than the last time Sam had seen it, but no less red and angry. “Do you understand what this is, Sam? What it does to me didn’t just go away because I popped down to the sulfur fields! So it’s either bottle it up and wait to explode and go psycho on the first breathing thing – or legion of things – I set sight on, or it’s letting off steam in a controlled environment. Like, I don’t know, killing vampires in Purgatory!”

“Then what’s the point?” Sam could hear his voice rising, but he couldn’t bring it back under control. “If he can’t help you control the Mark, then _why_ , Dean?”

“He does help me!” Dean shot back. “And it’s not your goddamned decision to make. I don’t have to explain anything to you!”

Sam took a step forward, not sure what he meant to do. Dean retreated the same half step, and then caught himself and moved forward again instead. Sam could see the confrontation spiraling out into a fight, and fighting with Dean – who’d spent 5 years in Hell doing the Devil only knew what – was a phenomenally bad idea. He held his hands up to stop Dean’s advance, and moved back to put the bed between them.

Note to self, Dean did not respond well to challenges. That wasn’t a revelation, he’d never been one to back down from a fight, but that moment of realization when he’d started moving back and then pushed forward had been new. Whatever else had happened in Hell, it was obvious that Dean was more aware of appearances. If Sam hadn’t been Sam – if Sam had been, perhaps, a demon in Crowley’s court – backing down from an obvious challenge to his authority could have been dangerous.

“Okay, Dean,” Sam said, trying to keep his voice down. “Let’s go get some lunch.”

Dean glared at him. “I know what you’re doing,” he said. “Stop. I do not _need_ you to rescue me. And so help me, Sam, if you get me out of this ‘for my own good,’ I will never forgive you. Do you understand me?”

Sam’s jaw worked, but he nodded. “Alright.”

Dean held his gaze for another long beat, and then he let out a disappointed breath and turned away. “Lunch,” he said.


	5. Misplaced Souls; Sweet and Smoky

“I think I still have a fever,” Dean said, absolutely not sulking.

“You have been whining for the last week that you need to be out of the room,” Crowley responded without even turning around to look at Dean. He fixed a watch to his wrist, and then snugged his tie into the V of his collar, and finally turned around. Dean had considered refusing to get dressed, but A.) He wasn’t actually two years old, and B.) Parading Dean around the demon court naked was both something Crowley would do, and something Dean would never live down.

“I was not whining,” Dean said, but even he knew that he’d never been a gracious patient. The last time he’d caught a flu, Sam had threatened to commit him to a psych ward and only come get him once he was pronounced flu-free. He hadn’t been committed, but Sam had tied him to the bed at one point. Dean had been too furious at the time to be impressed, but later on, he’d congratulated Sam on his obvious experience with bondage, and had gotten a little of his own back when Sam had blushed scarlet for weeks after at the slightest mention.

He tugged at the cuffs of the thermal undershirt Crowley had dropped on the bed along with a tee, flannel, and muttered comment about his fashion sense. Dean hadn’t known there was such a thing a luxurious thermal shirt, but Crowley had managed to find one. It was soft, thick, and almost stiflingly hot in the bedroom with the roaring fire.

By contrast, Crowley looked even more polished and well-tailored than usual. His shoes were so shiny, they practically looked liquid. He shrugged into his jacket while his eyes went red and he gave Dean that creepily long look over.

“Fever free and fit as a fiddle,” he announced with an equally creepy smile.

“Great,” Dean groused, but he couldn’t exactly argue that Crowley hadn’t been generous both with his time and giving Dean time to come to grips with the situation he’d gotten himself into. Dean had managed to keep himself occupied in the room for almost three weeks, mostly by means of his body continuing to betray him and dropping him irregularly into a hell of fevers and something not unlike withdrawal.

“I’m not going to drag you,” Crowley said after a long moment of non-red-eye starring.

That was the other thing that was putting Dean back on his heels. Crowley had been, for lack of a better word, a perfect gentlemen. More than that, he’d been kind, which was strange enough that Dean couldn’t help but be suspicious. He also had to admit that he was more annoyed that he couldn’t really be shocked than anything. There were large holes in his memory from his time spent as a demon, but the time he did remember was full of Crowley being unexpectedly indulgent, even in the face of Dean’s increasingly violent outbursts.

None of that meant he was looking forward to spending the day surrounded by a bunch of demons. He huffed out a breath and leaned over to finish lacing up his boots, and then stood and gestured at the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Don’t trip on your enthusiasm,” Crowley said, but his tone was mild. He opened the door and waved Dean through. The hallway beyond was empty of everyone except two demons standing strictly at attention on either side of the door. Dean’s fingers itched for the angel blade tucked in the back of his waistband. He’d been surprised and suspicious when he’d found the blade among the stack of clothing, but Crowley hadn’t commented on it, and Dean hadn’t asked, just in case it had been slipped to him by someone else, though who would do that or why was a mystery he wasn’t up to contemplating.

The demons fell in line to either side of them, but having Crowley at his shoulder was strangely comforting. He would have preferred Sam and Cas, but Crowley was at least a known devil, and one who had put significant effort into keeping him alive. Dean hadn’t explored far, but the hallway outside the bedroom had transformed from a bare, dusty corridor, to something warmer. The stones had been scrubbed clean, the glass polished, what looked like electric lights lined the walls.

“Been doing some decorating?” Dean asked for nothing other than to break up the sound of their footsteps on the carpet.

“The palace has been somewhat neglected for the last several centuries. I thought it was perhaps time that it was more…” Crowley trailed off, and Dean was conscious of Crowley’s eyes on the side of face. “More livable.”

Dean nodded, unsure of what to say or how to say it, and uncomfortably aware that this was yet another thing Crowley was doing for him. He had no idea why. No, he could be honest at least with that squirming feeling in his gut – he knew exactly why and had no idea what to do with it. He cleared his throat. “Cool. Nice… carpet. Very. Red.”

Crowley made a noise that Dean suspected had started out as a laugh, but he hadn’t been able to decide on a cough or a snort to cover it up, and it ended up sounding like he was choking.

“Shut up,” Dean snapped, which only got him a real laugh.

“Of course, darling.”

The throne room was a long hall of arches and columns, as carefully scrubbed clean as the hallways had been, the pale, unchanging light of the gray landscape filtering through dozens of stained glass windows. The central aisle was lined with chairs, a smartly dressed demon standing at each one. A demon at each one, except for one notable exception. Dean stopped next to her, but Crowley continued on, and their demon escorts faded away into the shadows in the corners of the room.

“Rowena,” Dean greeted through his teeth.

“Why, Dean Winchester!” Rowena said in her high, heavily accented voice. “I was wondering when you might grace us with your presence.” Spreading her arms, she made him a low bow. Kind of impressive in the heels, but Dean wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of looking down the wide neckline of her gown. Even if she weren’t hundreds of years old and a murderous witch, she wasn’t really his type.

“Oh, I’m full of grace,” Dean said with a smile.

“I just bet.” Rowena gave him a beautiful smile and stepped forward to cup his cheeks with her hands. He jerked back from her, but not far. He was cognizant of the dozens of eyes on him, just looking for a moment’s weakness to pounce. From the sudden glint in Rowena’s eye, she knew it. “Dear boy,” she said too kindly. “I have always wanted a…” She gave him a slow look up and down, and then her smile renewed. “Well. I guess a son-in-law will do.”

“What a coincidence, I’ve always wanted a…” Dean gave her the same slow once over and matched her smile. “Well. I guess a witch-in-law will do.”

Her smile twitched at the corners, but didn’t break. She patted his left cheek a touch too hard for affection, and then stepped back to stand in front of her chair, hands folded neatly in front of her. Dean resisted the urge to wipe at his face, and then gave in and did it anyways. With Rowena, a slap to the cheek was just as likely to be a curse that would melt his balls off as a casual gesture of general malice.

By the time he turned around, Crowley was draped across his throne, leaning sideways on one arm rest, legs crossed. He would have looked bored, but his eyes were sharp as they moved from Dean’s face to Rowena and back. The slight curl of his lips reminded Dean of a cat who’d spent a satisfying day terrorizing small rodents and had just then found himself a spot in the sun. He gestured to the nearly identical throne behind and just to the right of his own.

Dean would have preferred standing off in a dark corner, but he stretched his neck out left and right and crossed the remaining distance to the dais. The second throne was raised another short step above Crowley’s and thickly padded, but it still looked like one of the most uncomfortable things he’d ever seen. He sat down reluctantly. The back was tall and very straight, and Dean could see immediately why Crowley affected the sideways-slouch.

The court remained in awkward silence while Dean shifted restlessly on the cushion, and finally let his legs sprawl wide and shifted his ass forward so he could lean back, which pushed the tip of the angel blade against the base of his spine. Crowley let the silence go on several more awkward moments.

“Wow, this court business is so exciting,” Dean drawled once he’d wiggled himself into relative comfort. “Can’t imagine why I’d rather be in bed.”

He realized what he’d said only after a less-than-discreet cough pulled his attention to a demon on the left side of the aisle. From his position, he could just barely see Crowley’s head as he also turned to look at the offender. Dean felt his cheeks warming up, and hoped everyone was too busy staring at the hapless demon to notice.

The silence thickened, and the demon in question made a bow. “Apologies, your majesties.”

Crowley hummed a non-committal noise that just made the demon flush. He had blindingly white skin, and the flush made him look like twelve hours shirtless on a beach. Dean didn’t mean to laugh, but the sharp bark of the sound echoed around the cavernous stone hall, making several of the assembled demons flinch. Crowley twisted slightly in the throne to give him a look of definite amusement, and Dean stifled any further laughter.

Turning back to face his court, Crowley uncrossed his legs and switched his left over his right. “Well? If we’re all going to stand here with our dicks on our hands, I can go back to my room and leave you to it.”

Dean choked on his own breath, and a rotund, white-haired man hurried forward with a clipboard while the others belatedly took their seats. “Your majesty, the latest soul numbers for the month to date have been compiled. We are slightly behind projections, and have several matters awaiting your immediate attention. A minor riot in the fourth level, east resulted in several souls being misplaced. Eighty-seven high priority contracts have been collected –”

“Did he say riot?” Dean asked. Not that he cared about riots in Hell, because he remembered those guards, and fuck them sideways. But souls being ‘misplaced’ seemed worth more attention.

“I believe he did,” Crowley said mildly. Dean could see his fingers tapping gently on the armrest. “Do elucidate, Jonias.”

Jonias’ mouth opened and closed several times, and then he turned slightly to his right. A second demon, slim and dark-skinned and wearing a drab gray suit that did not do kind things for her figure, stood and took one step sideways into the aisle, but pointedly did not move any closer to the dais.

“My liege –”

“And you are?” Crowley asked.

“Alal, Majesty,” she said, and then glanced right and left as if looking for support. “A soul escaped holding and was able to open several other cells before we were made aware of the break.” Crowley made another vague noise and gave her no further encouragement. Dean watched the exchange with a frown. “That is. About… five thousand souls temporarily escaped.”

“Temporarily,” Crowley said with no inflection.

“Temporarily,” she stressed. “They were all contained.”

“Except for the ones that were misplaced,” Dean pointed out.

A brief flash of anger twisted Alal’s face, but Dean quirked an eyebrow at her and she stepped hastily backwards. “Fifty-two souls are unaccounted for at the present time. But!” she hurried to add, “By the end of this court session, I am fully confident that all fifty-two will be returned to their cells.”

“Considering that nearly a week will have passed down there by then, I would certainly hope so,” Crowley commented. “I wonder how exactly a soul managed to escape their cell while under eternal torment by one of my trusted torturers in a district dedicated to the punishment of greedy capitalists and politicians.”

Alal said nothing for several painful beats. The demons on either side of the aisle were looking more and more nervous by the second. “There may have been. A sort of…game in process. At the time.”

“A game.”

“Yes, majesty.”

“My demons were playing a game.”

She swallowed audibly. “Yes, majesty.”

“A game that distracted them so thoroughly that _five thousand souls escaped from their cells!_ ” Crowley roared, standing from his throne. His voice did not simply echo off the walls, but exploded against them, hitting the stones like bullets and raining down on the floor in shards. Dean blinked at the volume, but three of the assembled demons actually fell out of their chairs and Alal collapsed straight to her knees.

“Yikes,” Dean said into the resulting silence. Maybe he was wrong about this whole court thing. It sure beat daytime television.

Crowley turned slightly sideways and pointed vaguely in Alal’s direction, his other hand slipping into his pocket. Alal huddled on the floor with her hands covering her ears. “Take her, put her in a room. Lock the door.”

From the shadows, three demons rushed forward to haul her away. She went kicking her feet and shouting obscenities. One low heeled black shoe went flying to hit another demon on the head, which made Dean laugh and the demon curse. Alal shrieked and tried to catch the door frame with her feet on the way out. Dean reminded himself that she was not a person – she was possibly not even a she, or a he, or an anything. She was a cloud of oily black smoke and malice, and she didn’t need rescue. Whatever Crowley had in the works for her, she deserved it a hundred times over. He remembered very well what Hell’s trusted torturers were and exactly how much mercy they deserved.

“I expect a report on this incident in my hand in one hour.” Crowley straightened his jacket with a twitch of his hands, and sat back down. “High profile collections,” he said. “Go.”

Dean did not try to hide how bored he was by the time the court meeting had devolved into Crowley being handed a never ending stream of clipboards with documents to sign. Crowley devoted his whole attention to the pages, his eyes brilliant red as read them. Dean guessed it made sense – a Crossroads demon was unlikely to sign something he hadn’t read backwards, forwards, and… mystically, or whatever he saw when his eyes turned. Crowley might be King of Hell now, but he would always be King of the Crossroads before anything else. Dean yawned loudly, one foot kicking restlessly at the back of Crowley’s throne.

“Had enough, my darling?” Crowley asked without turning his eyes away from the clipboard or responding to the clearly audible _thunk thunk thunk_ of Dean’s boot hitting his throne, even if the throne was substantial enough that he couldn’t feel it. He hesitated over a line, and then looked up at the demon waiting for it very slowly, pen hovering over the signature line. The sudden tension in his shoulders made Dean hold the breath he’d taken in to list, exhaustively, what he’d had enough of.

Making a thinking noise, Crowley read, “The undersigned agrees to the whole and entire transfer of their marriage bonds, without exception, to the first party.”

Dean looked up. It was the same demon who’d gotten his attention before. He’d looked sunburnt when he’d flushed, but at Crowley’s expression, the blood drained so abruptly from his face that Dean thought he’d seen drowning victims with more color. There was a horrible rushing sound in his ears that drowned out whatever other sound there might have been in the room. He stood up very slowly, feeling the curves of the armrests under his palms as he pushed away from them. Crowley remained exactly where he was, clipboard held in one hand, pen still hovering over the page, but Dean could feel his eyes as he passed the throne to the edge of the dais.

“Want to read that to me again?” Dean asked. His voice was soft, but only because all his blood was rushing to his arms and legs, and his chest felt dangerously tight. Obligingly, Crowley read the passage again. The area around the dais suddenly cleared, demons rushing away like cockroaches. At the end of the hall, the door closed with a solid _boom_. The pale-faced demon stumbled backwards down the stairs, and Dean stepped down after him.

“You know, I’m flattered,” Dean said. “It’s nice to feel wanted.”

The demon tripped on his own feet and hit the ground hard. He skittered backwards, polished dress shoes slipping on the carpet. “N-n-n-now wait,” the demon stuttered, panting and gasping for breath. “I wasn’t – I was only… I would have let you go!”

“Let me go,” Dean repeated. “You want to steal me like a fucking horse, but it’s all okay, because you would have let me go.” He kicked hard at one ankle, and the demon scrambled to his feet. He made a break for the door. Dean darted forward to catch him by the back of the neck. He used the demon’s momentum to drive him forward into one fluted column, smashing him face-first into the rough stones. Hand curling up into the messy red hair, he dragged the demon’s head back and slammed his face into the column again.

The demon threw his head back against Dean’s grip. Dean recognized that posture all too well and whipped the angel blade out. He drove it up under the ribs, snugged hard to the spine, and twisted before the demon could escape. The demon screamed, and the human body he’d been inhabiting glowed orange with the face of the demon underneath it. The Mark throbbed, and Dean felt a wave of pleasure rippling through him at the blood trailing hot over his knuckles. He sucked in a deep breath of the iron scent and let it out with a shiver.

He felt every catch and drag on the angel blade as he pulled it back out. Dean dragged in another shivering breath as the body hit the stones. The rushing in his ears got louder rather than softer. He closed his eyes and breathed through it.

“Anyone ever tries that again,” he said, not sure if he was speaking above that ocean of blood crashing in ears, “I will not make it quick. I will trap you in your own meatsuit, and I will drag you down to the Pit, and I will put you on the rack, and we will see what I remember. Might still be a bit rusty, but I bet it’ll come back.” He looked at the gathered demons and saw Rowena hiding partially behind one column, looking pale and frightened. He could kill them all, he realized. There was only one way in or out of the room. The only problem would be getting them all before they smoked out of their meatsuits, but some of them would stay to fight all on their own. Something about inhabiting a body seemed to make them forget, when startled, that they didn’t have to stay in that body. Old habits and all. He’d have to deal with Rowena first, and then he could get at least three of them before the demons abandoned their corporeal bodies en mass. Even then, well, he would still have a dozen warm bodies that couldn’t run away from him. Warm bodies like the man that demon had been riding, warm bodies full of warm human blood.

Dean stretched his neck, and then wiped the blade against his jeans. His hand was clenched around the hilt so tightly that his arm was trembling. “Take the body back up topside. Salt and burn it, and have him laid to rest in a church graveyard. He deserves that much for being trapped with one of you.” For being killed by a monster like a Dean.

Without waiting for a response, Dean stalked out of the hall. He was cognizant of the two guards falling in behind him, and it was an effort not to turn and drive the blade into their hearts. Except those hearts did not belong to the slime inside their bodies.

“What an exciting first day at court,” Crowley said as he entered the room. Dean had tucked himself into the corner by the fireplace where he could clearly see the door while still getting the most benefit from the heat. He’d been chilled and shivering by the time he made it back to the room – one wrong turn had led to another, but he hadn’t been about to ask the demons silently shadowing him for directions. If they had so much as breathed loudly enough to get his attention, they would have died. The walk had done him some good, even if he had been cold and shaky with fatigue by the time he accidentally turned down the right hall and found himself in front of the familiar dark wooden door.

“I don’t think I should be around people right now,” Dean said. He had a tumbler of scotch in one hand, but he hadn’t done more than swirl the golden liquor around. Lowering his inhibitions any further seemed like a good way to start a drunken murder spree.

Pausing in the act of removing his jacket, Crowley gave him a curious look. “I wasn’t aware you considered demons to be people.”

Dean clenched his teeth. It had been a hard sell to that hungry place inside of him that yearned for blood, too. “The bodies they’re riding are people,” he gritted out.

“Ah.” Crowley draped his jacket over the back of a chair, and then followed it with his vest and tie. He opened the top two buttons on his shirt, removed his cufflinks, and pushed the sleeves out of the way. The cufflinks, he dropped into a dark dish that Dean was trying not to notice looked like a human skull.

Sliding his hands into his pockets, he ambled across the room like he didn’t know that Dean was one breath away from killing him just for the fun of it, innocent body or not. “That scotch was first bottled in 1782,” he said conversationally. “Alcohol is one of the few things that doesn’t lose its flavor going through the gates.”

Dean took a sip of it then, letting it sit on his tongue. They’d rarely had the money – or, really, the time – for things like expensive liquor. He was having a good day if he ended up with a bottle of Jack Daniels over the gallon of Canadian Mist more likely to be found in the groceries. “Sweet,” he said. “Smokey.”

“It is,” Crowley agreed. He poured himself several fingers and sat in the chair furthest away from Dean’s corner. Dean got the very distinct impression that this was not because he was afraid, but to encourage Dean up off the floor and into the other chair.

Dean thought about dumping the liquor on the floor, or tossing it – fancy crystal tumbler and all – into the fire, or throwing it at Crowley’s head. Instead, he sighed, and pushed himself up. The chair was more comfortable than he’d expected, and the tiny table next to it was big enough to hold the glass, and not much more. He set it down, but kept his fingers on the lip of it. It looked like real crystal. He was tempted to make it sing.

“I approve, very much, of your handling of our little would-be home wrecker,” Crowley said after a moment broken only by the crack of the fire. He laughed. “The looks on all their faces when you stood up! Hell below, that couldn’t have been more perfect if we’d planned it.”

A nasty suspicion wormed its way into his gut and Dean stopped fiddling with the glass. He looked over at Crowley. “Tell me you didn’t…”

“No,” Crowley said easily. “Though I almost wish I had, just for the entertainment value alone. Therigood was never the sharpest tool in the kit, but to try to slip a contract past _me_?”

Almost despite himself, Dean relaxed. “You have been a little occupied recently,” he pointed out.

Crowley sighed regretfully and took a drink. “If only.”

“Just ‘cuz you got a kick out of it doesn’t change what I said,” Dean said after another long minute. “I can’t control this.” And wasn’t that a kick between the legs? He’d sold himself to Hell to get away from the First Blade, and it didn’t even matter. He was no calmer than he had been in that barn with Cain bleeding out at his feet.

“Eighteen souls still have not been accounted for,” Crowley said, ignoring him. “Though every demon in the pit is very… motivated, currently, to find them. Still, I think it might be time to take a tour of the levels, show off my new spouse, wave at the masses.”

“Did you hear me?”

“And perhaps, there is a room in the pit that might be made comfortable for a royal honeymoon,” Crowley plowed on. “Where we could have years to get you in control.”

Dean froze, already half out of the chair. “What?”

“Part of our contract is that I give you peace. Devil help me if I take you back to your brother not wholly sane and in total control of yourself. The time differential will work in our favor, and three days away from the court will not be catastrophic, which gives us nearly a year in the Pit, minus travel time.”

Dean thought about spending another year in the Pit, even a minute in the Pit, listening to the screams of tortured souls. He could already smell it – searing flesh, rot, brimstone – and just barely suppressed his gag reflex.

“It will be nothing like your first stay in the Pit,” Crowley said, voice almost gentle. “We just need to take advantage of the time differential, and Alal’s _misplaced_ souls are the perfect excuse to pay the Pit a visit. I’ve only been down there twice since I took the throne in any event. My memories of the place are hardly fond either.”

“You were on the rack?” Dean asked.

Crowley didn’t actually call him an idiot, but said, “All demons start life in the Pit.”

Dean nodded. He didn’t like to think about how many demons currently walking the halls, taking human bodies, causing suffering on earth were _his_ , souls that he’d put on the rack and twisted until a demon climbed off of it. He couldn’t remember them all, but he remembered enough. He wondered if he would recognize them if he saw them again. He wondered how many of them remembered what his hand felt like on the fabric of their soul.

“I don’t know if I’d suggest leaving your mother alone in your throne room too long,” he said.

“Shall we take her with us?” Crowley asked with a slow smile. “I’m sure there would be something to hold her attention while we’re occupied.”

Dean shuddered. “And give her a year alone with the Pit?”

“The damage could be substantial,” Crowley agreed after a moment of thought. He perked up. “We could always let someone demonstrate the techniques of the rack to her.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on Tumblr: http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/
> 
> Find the Tumblr post here: https://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/post/189420253865/the-persephone-agreement


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